Christmas Notebook

My first memory of pie is my Grandma Ruth’s pies and the glass pie plates she used to bring her yummy pies to family reunions. The tops were decorated with cutting lines, punched with a fork, and sprinkled with sugar before baking. I loved those pies. Even as a child I was captivated by that sparkly sugar. Did I ever tell you how much I love glitter???

See, just like Grandma used to make. Forked and glittered…I mean sugared…and ready to pop in the oven.

The above is in a disposable plate as it was made for a bake sale. Here are two pies ready to pop in the oven, made in two of my pie plates. I can just about guarantee that the one in the back has peaches in it because that’s the red pie plate I always use for peach pie. 🙂 And those cinnamon roses to the right…oh, yum!

Anyhoo, I’ve been collecting pie plates for years and I think it’s all Grandma’s fault. The first ceramic plate I ever received was a wedding gift in 1977. The second plate I obtained was purchased at Branson, Missouri, when I and the ladies from my church took a field trip there. That was sometime in the early eighties…rough estimate…not sure just when we went down there…After that, I began picking them up at craft fairs, while on vacation, as gifts, etc. I am sure I have 10 or more that aren’t shown in these pictures. There isn’t enough room to display them all. They sit on pegs in the kitchen. To get one down, I have to have someone climb on the counter…not entirely convenient, but they *do* look nice up there.

That empty space on the left must be for a pie plate with a pie in it… The plate with the flowers came from a potter at a Rendezvous. I have several plates from the same potter, though I don’t know his/her name. The tree pie plate was a gift from a dear friend. She loves trees. There’s more to that story that I won’t share here, but, girlfriend, you know who you are. Much love. The doily plate is the one I picked up in Branson when my Bible study ladies took a field trip there.

Many pie plates are in browns, greys, muted blues. I’m always on the lookout for something in a different color, like the pink one in this photo. One of my favorites.

I found the brown one somewhere in Tennessee while on vacation. And isn’t the little kitty plate cute? Yes, I’ve made little pies in it. The dark wine red plate is one of my favorites for peach pie.

More Rendezvous pie plates in this picture. And the one on the right is a dark hunter green.

Here are three of my five or six Christmas pie plates. I put them up for the holidays.

The one with the blue painting inside the rim was a gift. The next one I found at the Cedarhurst Craft Fair. I love the detail of the hand painted design. I usually get a lot of comments on the next one, which I bought in Kentucky somewhere. People seem to like the swirls and the mix of colors.

In this picture, you get an idea of how the pegs that hold the pie plates and the curtains run over the cabinets as well as over the windows. To the right, they also run over the refrigerator. The ceiling is 12′ high, by the way. Our kitchen was, at one time, an enclosed back porch. One reason I had to paint the ceiling blue. 🙂

And they aren’t just for pie. We make corn bread in them.

And apple cake.

Just to mention a couple of things. I use the plates a lot. Seems there’s no sense in having them, if they aren’t used.

When we moved into our current home, my friend Liz made this counted cross stitch for me. She knows I love to bake pie. 🙂

Here’s my Grandma (on the right) and her sister Iva as they peeled apples together. Both have since passed away, but pie plates will always remind me of Grandma.

~~Rhonda